Strategic communications for brands in highly regulated markets.

Grace

What’s the value of a corporate brand name?

Who is Grace?

Despite focusing on individual lines of business rather than its corporate brand, this 160-year-old holding company’s powerful name recognition was due more to high profile environmental events, which led to a Chapter 11 filing, than its high performance, high quality speciality materials. Legacy issues and a John Travolta movie left outsiders with a distorted view of Grace. New Grace management was determined to strengthen its image as it began its transition from a diverse holding company to a vibrant, integrated operating organization, focusing on chemicals and specialty materials.

Our intent was to get Grace the credit it truly deserved for the quality of its products, services, and people. We measured the value of the Grace name and its potential to impact the company’s reputation and image.

Grace products stand for performance and quality.

The Grace brand had little value to customers. Any equity that existed was property of the product brands. Only non-customers, affected communities, business media, and politicians had an incomplete and oftentimes-distorted picture of what Grace was and the value it brought to everyday life.

Despite its legacy issues, Grace was clearly a name and a mark worth retaining. Its product portfolio was closely associated with performance and quality, while its people sustained service-driven customer relationships as the company maintained its low profile while managing its environmental issues.

It wasn’t about the bonds we create between chemicals, but the bonds created between people.

The winning campaign introduced the concept of Human Chemistry, the special relationship between Grace customers’ and their customers, facilitated by Grace’s advanced technology, talent, and innovation. Creative demonstrated the productivity and value that Grace provided its customers to pass along to their customers.

Grace lives on.

As a result, the Grace name lives on, reinvigorated with a sense of higher purpose. Today, Grace products are used in more than 150 countries around the world. Grace emerged from Chapter 11 in February 2014, 13 years after it filed for bankruptcy protection.